101 on how not to release your game

<*>Develop a game and make one of its main features a ranking list. <*>Give people early access to the full game (Note: you couldn't buy EA). <*>Release the game and don't reset ranking/progress. <*>Congratulation. One of your features is now scewed and completly irrelevant.

Just not it. Very difficult even on easiest difficulty. Needs more balancing honestly

Super fun in the beginning, but has a serious shelf life. You basically have to memorize a upgrade pattern, then pray you get a layout that works. Incredibly stupid past level 37. I don't get why ruin a game at the very end?

While I did like the game, the fact that it seems to rail road you into using select towers, and some towers are just not strong enough. For the past like 5 runs I have not been able to beat Wave 10 boss, and I'm just simply getting sick of this game. And I don't understand why they needed a new game mode with a New Meta? They already had a Meta.... This game is getting uninstalls and going into my junk seciton. I did like this game... then it kinda gets boring. The same looking map over and over and over. Having to build the same bloody infastructiure every time around. And then it feels like the late Meta progresssion is utterly pointless. Yes I get to save up 1000 Honour and then later 2000 honour to have a chance 1% and then 2% chance at better rewards? Ohh I get to spend honour so I get better rewards from a Chest? But then a Elite enemy must actually spawn. I'm at a point where I realize my strats are not good enough as a go Fine... Fine ... Fine... Dead. And Meta progression has stopped being interesting. And because I have to rebuild my town from the ground up, their never really seems to be resources available to even look at some of the more expensive buildings. And I kinda hate RNG.... Ohh I get an Oracle event that lets me research things faster early in the map? Only problem is the University requires so much wood. That the effect will be long gone before I ever get the University built. And then I will probably die next wave anyway cause my towers failed to deal 1 more damage to the first boss, and he leaks and its game over. Don't matter how weak he is, or how strong my defese still are. It doesn't matter that I have beaten him 10 times in row with the same strategy, my towers did not get the correct RNG buff, a RNG buff actually made the towers I relied on worthless. Some tower feel utterly worthless. The Cold Tower being one of them, its suppose to Damage and Slow? Does it do anything? OR Is it dropped their speed from a whole 10 to a 9.5? I can visually tell. And its damage output is lacking. And Ohh Goodey, I finally got enough Banners for a Fusion Banner? But wait.... I have to go look on a Wiki that the towers I like to use don't have a Fusion available. And when I do find a combo to aim for, their is very little visual indication that anything different or more powerful is happening. Actually took a look at the Meta Mode.... and and why did they have to introduce a new mode? Its more way to many pointless things to spend honour on that feels way to insignificant to spend my time on. 1% here, 1% their. This game is now offically on my junk list. And my simply ask steam to remove it from my list as I don't want to reconsider to be waste any more of my time on this game.

Since I’ve put some more hours into Nordhold, I thought it was time to rewrite my review—though I’m still leaving it negative for now. Let’s start with the positives: Nordhold is a roguelite tower defense game featuring procedurally generated maps, unlockable power-ups for future runs, a banner system for run-specific bonuses, and an endless mode. The procedural map generation keeps each run feeling fresh, and the banner system is well-designed, offering strategic variety. There are dozens of banners, rewarding both broad tower setups and focused builds. For about 30 hours, the game delivered a solid experience. I unlocked all the power-ups and cleared wave 30, which marks the end of the standard mode. Since then, I’ve been stuck trying to beat wave 37—a major difficulty spike. And that’s the core issue: beyond that point, there's little meaningful content. At €20, 30–40 hours of gameplay might feel short, especially when progression hits a near-impossible wall. I enjoy endless roguelites and I don’t mind a challenge when progressing beyond the intended game length (I’m playing Balatro too), but this difficulty jump feels less like a curve and more like a brick wall. Another issue is RNG—both in map layout and banners. While you can reroll and influence banners, your success heavily depends on getting the right ones. Banners come in common, rare, and legendary tiers, and getting the a lot of bad or the wrong ones can cripple your strategy. In other roguelites like Hades the choice of a bad boon is mitigated, because your skill can carry you. In Nordhold, your influence is mostly limited to tower placement and a few spells, so bad luck hurts more. Finally, there are two stronger starting bonuses you can unlock, each with a drawback. One gives more starting resources but buffs enemies, while the other offers a high-tier relic, though you can’t undo the choice once made. These options are only available if you reached wave 10 in your previous run. While not essential, it’s frustrating to be locked out of all enhanced starts when the only thing left for me is to beat is wave 37—forcing unnecessary grinding just to attempt it with all options available.

Very misleading description and trailer. This game has no city building and has an incredibly uninspired basic economy balance even for a tower defence game. Lacking depth, content and balance is incredibly shameful for a rogue-lite session-based tower-defense game: - Every run feels exactly the same thanks to lacking enemy variety and low amount of content overall - no regions, no player choice, no interesting challenges or "easter eggs". - Your build and synergies are mostly decided by RNG rolls for upgrades, and not by your "idea" or "plan" to cook up some interesting combo or interaction. Even then they feel basic aside from a few rare *unique* upgrades that are a half-step above the usual DPS increase. - Over-reliance on meta unlocks to pan out play time. Basically a lot of mechanics and upgrades are barred behind meta currency that is almost directly tied to time spent in-game. You cant expect to finish runs without clocking up currency to allow you to become powerful enough to beat scaled up waves even if your build is onpoint and your theorycrafting checks out. - No city building, no city planning. Its just an upgrade tree in the form of a few different buildings that boost your resource gain for building or upgrading towers. Another thing worth mentioning is that it uses free low poly asset packs that are sometimes incredibly clashing, ruining any semblance of an art style, hero portraits especially. Overall, cant recommend it.

Seemed to be the exact same thing as the demo. Wait for a deep discount

As of right now I think this game needs more balancing to make it more fun. Lightning tower seems to be the only method to high lvls and it just got a major nerf. The Meta Progression i think needs to tone down the honor costs im quiting at 750 honor a point. Just seems like a huge time sink with not much variety in game play. Looking forward to checking back and seeing how it develops think they're on the right track

Unfortunately I can't recommend this in a current state. I'm in love with tower defence and rogue likes, but it feels that Nordhold just doesn't get it right. Meta progress doesn't stack your power, it's basically just core features walled behind the "too long tutorial" (8h spend didnt unlock all the core features still). Tower defence part is fine until you realise there is actually not that much variations that actually work (especially on higher ascendance), and base/eco building is basically spamming the same order in every game because starting bonuses doesn't affect that at all (maybe a little, but still same order). Upd.: Well, they released a couple of major updates, adding meta-progression tree and some balance changes. Which is good in general but unfortunately it is still just not fun to play.

Never understood the allure of locking game features behind lock and key, forcing the player to lose over and over again before they can actually experience the game it's meant to be played. It basically means, your first playthroughs are useless, and just a waste of time because you can't "beat the game" or even play it properly yet.

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Okay this was too much fun. Bought the game, looked up, and it was 3 AM.

It seemed neat until I saw the perk that increases legendary discovery chance caps out at 2%. Also how low everything seems to cap out at and scale too. Really? Seriously? THATS the cap of a stat like that in your roguelike? No thanks, hard pass.

By Odin’s beard, Nordhold is a stormborn saga of steel, blood, and unyielding glory! If you’ve ever dreamed of commanding the walls of Asgard itself against the wrath of Hel’s minions, this is your shieldwall to stand behind! This isn’t your grandmother’s tower defense – this is a roguelike honour-hunt through the Nine Realms, where every defeat teaches, and every victory is a feast worthy of Einherjar. Every run is a saga anew, as we amass honour across battles and unlock upgrades that feel like blessings from Freyja herself. You'll craft synergies stronger than Urd’s own threads, weaving death upon your foes with runestones, archers, and the fury of frost and flame. The visuals sing like skalds by the hearthfire – every map a windswept fjord or cursed ruin, steeped in myth and mystery. The music? By the Norns, it stirs the soul like war drums echoing across the Bifröst! As eternal as Yggdrasil’s roots, as eternal is the replayability of this game. With procedurally generated maps, upgrades chosen like fates cast by the Norns, and difficulty that rises like the Midgard Serpent, Nordhold begs to be played again and again. You will fall – but like a true Norse warrior, you’ll rise stronger, smarter, more savage. 10/10 – Would die gloriously on wave 42 and scream “FOR VALHALLA!” while restarting.

I want to have FUN playing a game, without watching play-throughs, or reading comments (which I never do), and this experience has been *nothing* like FUN. At first (the demo), it was great! Awesome graphics, interesting mechanics, etc. I put it on my wishlist. I not only bought it, I also bought the 'Supporter' pack, thinking (wrongly) that the developers would actually listen to the negative comments that might get posted by players like me. I can't even kill the level 10 BOSS anymore regularly. I'm done, after 22+ hours, over MANY months of playing here-and-there; it aint gettin any better....

Practically impossible to get past the first 10 waves. overly complex mechanics for a TD game and a worthless tutorial... good luck

Game is just amazing even in its 1.0 release form, i got so hooked i almost lost my job, my girlfriend, my dog was always hungry, didnt pick up my kids at school, didnt sleep, didnt take a shit. Thats how much i enjoyed it haha. The developers are still working on it so im eager to see the new towers and systems they come up with. Big shout out to splattercat for showcasing it on his channel. 100% would reccomend to a friend

Played 40 hours over the course of 2 days - didn't eat well, got dehydrated and ended up constipated. Would do it again. A+++

It's well made but I found it too redundant and already own like 10 tower defense games, I just don't need this. If you're a tower defense fanatic it's good. I see reviews that say it's different every run but I didn't see that. You can force the game to do things like make everything crit or faster attack speed/items to spice things up but nothing feels organic. It all feels contrived, I didnt really slip into cool builds I pretty much did the same thing every run unless I really went out of my way to do different things.

Sorry - can't review. Playing... :)

Had a promising start, but is now overtuned crap. Meta takes WAAAAAAAAAY to long to progress. To the dustbin of forgotten games.

After all this time, there are way too many imbalances and only 1 path past 40. No use in all these different towers and spells when you are forced to use the same few in order to advance. This game is dumb.

Same reason as most of the negative reviews. There is no experimentation with tower. I unlocked everything in the game and I still always use to the L25 or L30 boss just because I apparently did not do the right things. I refuse to play a game that forces me to use a guided patch any further. If I wanted that, i'll play a linear FPS, at least then I get to kill things based on skill. As you can see at my time playing, I give it a fair try.

Not once had a rouge like stress me tf out the more i play it, I either build what i wanna build get to wave 24/29 and get barrel fisted by an unkillable set of mobs or boss walks right on through, or i focus build few towers and wave 15 rolls around and twig shields rule the world.

They broke the game. The opening economy has been patched to be so punishing that the later stages of the game where the interesting strategy on towers happens have become unreachable. Because you need to follow a specific "get these items", "select these upgrades", and pick specific perks for specifically placed towers, without any deviation or variance, it's about memorizing builds instead of emergent game play.